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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24919801">'39</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay'>carloabay</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Queen (Band) References, because they lift me up ok?, seriously Queen has got me through some shit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:56:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>991</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24919801</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The distance between Fitz and Simmons gets torturously, slowly, less and less.</p><p>Title taken from the Queen song '39</p><p>I don't own any of this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jemma Simmons &amp; Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>'39</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Kill me they're so cute but the writers of AoS think it's funny to test my patience and will to live.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Don't you hear my call, though you're many years away...</em>
</p><p>Jemma hung around the medical bay in the belly of the Zephyr for the first few days of their journey into space. Davis had been relentlessly blasting AC/DC in the cockpit to keep his nerve, and Agents O'Brien and Diaz had taken to playing loud card games whenever they had a break. Jemma was more of a Queen sort of girl, and card games had never been her forte, so she'd retreated downstairs and had spent the past four hours, by her watch, re-organising her equipment. Silly, really, to still wear a watch, but she'd been given it as a going away present when she'd been accepted into the Academy, and though she wasn't really one for mementos, this was a special exception.</p><p>She straightened the syringes in their trays for the umpteenth time, then tucked a stray string of hair behind her ear and shuddered in the silence of the clean, whitened room. She missed him. She was grieving too, she supposed; the body, <em>his</em> body, had messed with her mind and triggered the worst sort of nightmares, whenever she felt inclined to sleep. Not often, now that she thought about it. Jemma bent her head and his ring unstuck from her skin to bounce against the inside of her blouse, such a cruel reminder of the man she was missing. She thought for a second about going back upstairs, pouring herself into the hunt, but then she realised that she wouldn't be able to stomach even looking out at space. Jemma Simmons had had quite enough of space.</p><p>∆</p><p>Leopold Fitz had had quite enough of space. And aliens. Racist, the lot of them. Who cared about the colour of his eyes and whether or not he liked bloody Xandarian snails? He was meant to be peacefully sleeping, ready to wake up in seventy-odd years and reunite with the love of his life, but bloody <em>space</em> and bloody <em>aliens</em> and all those years just seemed to get in between them.</p><p>Enoch wasn't a comfort, at all. In fact, he was an emotional hindrance most of the time, but he was useful and friendly and helping, so Fitz didn't want to discount him. Enoch had gotten them into this mess, but Fitz wanted to have faith that he'd get them out of it again.</p><p>He spent his days fixing the spaceship (which was disastrously under-maintenanced, by the way) and dreaming about what he'd do when they'd all finished saving the world for the umpteenth time. Maybe listen to some Queen, dance sappily with Jemma along to Lily of the Valley and end up in bed, remembering the details of each other's bodies…</p><p>He closed the panel in the wall of the ship and patted it happily, lost in warm, Jemma-y thoughts, then stood and brushed himself down. Spaceships tended to get very dirty, especially when you were relentlessly cleaning and fixing and engineering in the nastiest, deepest parts of them. That work would get him a few credits, and a few more shifts and he'd be able to buy passage to Naro-Atzia, fall back to sleep again, and wake up and get his girl.</p><p>∆</p><p>One by one, the agents had lost faith and requested return to earth. Jemma started to miss the rowdy card games and the attempts to get Daisy to join in with the baby agents, but at least Davis was still nodding his head to his rock music, and Piper was still there to quip at Daisy, bicker with Davis and be a general ray of sarcastic sunshine.</p><p>Daisy had never faltered, even for a second, and Jemma fiercely loved that from her. She was always at the computers or rallying the team onwards or speculating, but even Daisy's unfailing drive hadn't been enough to quench the terror and dread that had immobilised Jemma when they'd found Enoch's ship, torn in half and empty. She'd seen the wreckage in her thoughts for days, and she had thought of Fitz's space-frozen body, drifting alone in a void and gone from her forever. The ring around her neck had seemed especially tight and cold after that, and the time and distance between her and Fitz had seemed stretched, further and longer than ever. Like she was reaching out a hand and he couldn't see it.</p><p>She wished there was a way, to tell him, talk to him. Write him a letter, sort the stars into words, to give him a message. She was chasing him through the universe, the universe that had failed to keep them apart, to find him, and when she did (because she would), she would never leave his side again.</p><p>∆</p><p>Those few seconds had been almost a fever dream. A hallucination of a beautiful, changed woman with the banana-shape of a smile on her face and the eyes that looked like they'd seen the universe, her mother's eyes. Time and space had warped between them, even the universe had failed to keep them apart, but then she was gone, and the blink of travel had him believing for another half second that none of it had been real at all.</p><p>∆</p><p>He'd been there. He'd been so close. Pity me, Fitz. Humour me, you cruel universe. Let me take his hand, after all this time, just let us stay together, even if it would just be one last time. I'll never stop hunting, Fitz. I will always come after you. To the ends of everything, after coming so close, there is no way that I could relent now.</p><p>∆</p><p>Just as he remembered. Warm and Jemma-y. The dance might have to wait for now, but she was all he needed.</p><p>∆</p><p>This had not been the reunion she'd planned, but to hell with plans. Maybe he had read her star-worded letter. Or maybe the universe had, and it had answered with him.</p><p>
  <em>Don't you hear me calling you?</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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